I just completed a 5 week cross country road trip with extended stops in Glacier, Yellowstone, Badlands, Mt Rainier, Olympic, and Roosevelt NPS. I saw 0 lifers. I guess I've already picked off the easy stuff and didn't get lucky. We still had 48 species, including 4 Marmota, Pygmy Shrew, both species of otters in view at once, hearing a wolf howl for hours, learning the differences between the several species of chipmunks we were in the range of, and a pair of battling elk. It was pretty good, but it would have been nice to see something new.

I've been sailing, starting in Panama City, FL and am currently in Puerto Rico. I started out with Atlantic Spotted Dolphins in FL, saw Buffy Flower Bats, Waterhouse's Leaf-nosed Bats, Pantropical Spotted Dolphins, and Bahamian Hutia in the Bahamas. The Hutia, with the very limited, very remote range would have to be the highlight. Hopefully I can see a few more bats before leaving PR.

yaaaaaaaay, i get to post here. i must be too interested in looking at the ground all the time and i never see many mammals. well the other day i FINALLY saw a live badger. DORS plenty but i saw one alive. it looked at me from outside it's burrow and bolted in. i was about twenty feet away so i pulled the camera and waited for a while. no luck. 39 years and thousands of hours in the field. finally see one in "the badger state". lol

muskiemagnet wrote:yaaaaaaaay, i get to post here. i must be too interested in looking at the ground all the time and i never see many mammals. well the other day i FINALLY saw a live badger. DORS plenty but i saw one alive. it looked at me from outside it's burrow and bolted in. i was about twenty feet away so i pulled the camera and waited for a while. no luck. 39 years and thousands of hours in the field. finally see one in "the badger state". lol

Nice! Congrats on an uncommon encounter. And now that you know where to go, you can try going back and seeing him again. I'm still waiting on my first badger here (or anywhere else), I have seen stink badgers in Asia but those don't really count as they're actually considered skunks rather than badgers.

J-Miz wrote:Florida Panther! Frickin' awesome! And that list of lifers you posted on the birds forum has me wanting to see a forthcoming post from you.

Yeah, on that same trip I had 2 bears and a bobcat. It was pretty crazy.

Not sure there will be a post. For one thing, I don't have a bird lens, and even if I did, nearly all of my life birds were far off, flying away or giving poor views. Even the Scrub Jay. I was going to take a shower so didn't even have binoculars and I saw it foraging near the bathroom in a tree. It then kept moving away from me before flying over a pond. Only one I could find. In a sense seeing all these new birds without amazing looks was one of my biggest disappointments of the trip.

Not nearly as cool as my last lifer, but finally saw a Hairy-tailed Mole under a snake board. Finishes off the 3 species of eastern US moles for me. All of which were lifered under boards while looking for snakes.

Since a few people mentioned bats, I thought I would share this picture I took in northern California. No idea what kind of bat this is, but it was trying to fly against the wind over the American River. At one point it was so close I could have reached out and grabbed it.

I agree wholeheartedly with pete, Owen! I've seen quite a few mink in my life, but I don't know that I've ever gotten as good a look at one as that - and I certainly don't have a photograph of one anywhere near as good as that. There are a number of people here at FHF that I'd love to spend some time with someday, but you're one that I'd love to spend some time learning from. You've got some real skill, amigo!

pete wrote:Owen.....
That shot is fantastic!! You get some absolutely amazing pics.

gbin wrote:I agree wholeheartedly with pete, Owen! I've seen quite a few mink in my life, but I don't know that I've ever gotten as good a look at one as that - and I certainly don't have a photograph of one anywhere near as good as that. There are a number of people here at FHF that I'd love to spend some time with someday, but you're one that I'd love to spend some time learning from. You've got some real skill, amigo!

Gerry

Gerry, Pete... thanks. I did an OK job stalking it as I saw it and went around the rocks to 'catch it' as it came around that side.

I was in Costa Rica earlier this month doing some birding/herping and got a few mammals, at least one of which was a lifer.
I was walking down a dirt road in a smallish patch of rainforest when I just casually looked back down the road behind me.
As I looked back, I saw the distinctive form of a gray morph Jaguarundi run across the road behind me and into the forest.

It was only the briefest of glimpses but there isn't really anything else that size and color with that catlike run. We ran down there and scanned to forest for a second glimpse, but saw nothing as you would expect with a forest cat.

gbin wrote:Lucky you, Chris! Despite all the time I've spent in Central America, I haven't yet seen a jaguarundi in the wild, myself - and I'm quite envious!

During our honeymoon in Belize, on a short hike in Cockscomb just after a tropical depression my wife spotted a Jaguarundi sniffing the trail just a few meters in front of her. Unfortunately, I was bent over about 5 meters further back, flipping a log for herps! She said something, the jaguarundi took off, I looked up and only saw a flash that I never could have ID'd if she hadn't told me what it was. That's what I get for flippin' stuff...

Indian Giant Flying Squirrel in the foothills of the Himalayas last week. I ID'd it when it jumped off the branch and glided right over my head! One of the coolest mammal moments of my life.

And it's been two years since I got the lifer, but I finally photographed an Asian House Shrew for the first time last night. World's biggest shrew species. Caught it in a live trap that I'd set for mice.

I'll get posts with my Indian and Bangladeshi mammals up as soon as possible.

On the topic of squirrels, I saw my first (and second, and third...) Kaibab squirrel(s) while visiting the North Rim of the Grand Canyon last week. Beautiful species, very similar but in my opinion even prettier than its close cousin the Abert's squirrel on the South Rim. Tried hard to get pictures, but was unsuccessful due to their wariness despite other people telling me how these squirrels would frolic right in front of them.

I would bet that your wife got to see things she wouldn't have if you hadn't been flipping, jonathan, just as you wouldn't have gotten even a glimpse of that jaguarundi if she had been flipping, too. I know it works well for my wife and me that she predominantly looks up for birds and mammals and I predominantly look down for herps and mammals.

Recent family trip to visit my sister in Texas brought a few nice mammals.

Certain lifers would have been a pocket mouse and kangaroo rat, probable some bats. Alas, I got ID's for neither so liferwise I had to content myself with blacktailed jackrabbit, rock squirrel, gray fox, black bear and javelina.

Came across a few DOR's I would have loved to add to the list as well.

Got alot these past few months in Borneo. Some of the more exciting ones for me were Marbled cat, banded linsang, common porcupine (asian variety), brush tailed tree shrew, island flying foxes. There were more but I can't recall right now, i'll make a borneo post once I process photos.

I'm out of the field for 3 days, so far I've seen 24 new mammals I've identified, and maybe 6-8 I haven't. My last lifer was Lord Derby's Anomalure. The best mammals on the list are Tree Pangolin, Central African Linsang, and Drill. I am on Bioko. I guess I should mention that.

Congrats on the Marbled Cat and Banded Linsang.

Edit: picked up a Pallid Needle-clawed Galago and another Linsang sighting last night.

Saw a few mammals in Australia over Xmas. Most weren't new other than a few bats I didn't get an ID on (yet?).
I think the only lifer I put a name on was this Uromys caudimaculatus. Really neat, giant rainforest rats.

I spent the weekend at an inn in the woods of Jutland celebrating my father's 75th birthday.

Along with my wife and kids I got up early this morning for a nice walk through the mist to knock off what I guess is the final species on the native mammal list I considered it downright embarassing not to have seen.

Decades late (since reintroduced populations which is all we have here on Zealand don't really count) I finally ticked off the red deer.

I saw it just over a weeks time ago but had to consult with experts before I could be sure, after they looked at my photos the verdict is in... my newest mammal lifer is the mountain Coati (Nasuella olivacea), pretty rare little critter

I saw around 80 new mammals this past winter. The last was Walia Ibex in the Simien Mountains. Other highlights included Speke's Pectinator, African Wild Dogs, Naked Mole Rat, Serval, Grevy's Zebra, Ethioian Wolf, and 17 primates.

I was in the same situation. Possible Pangolin played a big roll in my choice to volunteer there for 5 months. Bioko is a decent Pangolin place, I saw 4 that were all different individuals. My girlfriend randomly saw 2 in one day, about 7 k apart. I saw one on my 3rd night walk, and that reduced my effort afterwords.

I couldn't believe my luck, i actually wouldn't allow myself to believe it until I had gotten a 2nd and 3rd opinion from people who know better than I do! I'll make a post soon with some highlights.

Amazing! What were you working on in Bioko? Thats a place i'd really like to go, I applied for a position there years ago but my CV was rather weak at the time its alot better now, maybe i should try again.

Thats great you two saw so many pangolins! I got my lifer pangolin in Danum Valley in Borneo two years ago, we were hauling equipment out into the field and one ran across the trail infront of us, at ~9 in the morning no less! Last year when I was back in Borneo my boss saw one, she stopped in her tracks and said "Whoa, Amazing!", but we were constantly saying that so i didn't pay much attention and kept working. Turns out she had seen a pangolin scrambling up a hill, when she told me ~30 sec later I went after it but couldnt track it down again. I cant remember what time of day that was but it was definitely sunny out. Strange that both my pangolin encounter and my near encounter were during the day, I have taken countless nighthikes in the same area and never bumped into a pangolin then. Potentially going back again this year, hoping to knock off the sun bear and clouded leopard more than anything but I certainly wouldn't mind another pangolin encounter.

Last year on Dominica I saw my first Leptodactylus fallax, the Giant Ditch Frog. These are almost extinct, now found only on Montserrat and Dominica, very rare in both places. The one I saw was a very large brownish orange creature with thickly barred legs positioned less than a meter away from a small waterfall I was climbing. No camera. I was too spellbound to even try to touch this magical being, which sat motionless in its tiny grotto. It would definitely have taken two hands to safely hold.

Dominica has more than its share of rare creatures. I go there every year and always see Imperial Amazon parrots and Clouded Boas. The 'Mountain Chicken' was my first in many years. I hope not my last.

Just picked up a few more mammal lifers, nothing too impressive but did a bit of hiking in the Alps and saw my first Alpine Marmots (Marmota marmota). I also saw some sort of aquatic shrew running along the edge of a stream in the alps, very brief encounter lasting only about 10 seconds but I saw it run in and out of the water several times and then disappear along with the current. Seemed very at home both in the water and on the rocks.

Then some night hiking in the Black forest in Germany produced a pair of edible dormice (Glis glis). Also a good number of small rodents perhaps voles which I have not IDed.